Hushpuppi, embattled Nigerian socialite and social media sensation, has agreed to plead guilty to the money laundering charge against him.
Hushpuppi, who is known for his extravagant lifestyle, was detained in the UAE in June 2020 alongside 11 of his associates over allegations bordering on hacking, impersonation, scamming, banking fraud, and identity theft.
The social media personality’s extradition to the US had followed after the UAE police detailed his arrest in a special operation dubbed ‘Fox Hunt 2’ where he was accused of defrauding 1.9 million victims to the tune of N168 billion.
Hushpuppi, whose real name is Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, was detained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Chicago ahead of his trial.
A partly redacted plea agreement document in the cyber fraud case against him surfaced online on Wednesday.
In the court file signed by Loius Shapiro, Hushpuppi’s lawyer, on behalf of the defendant, Hushpuppi agreed to give up the right to indictment by a grand jury and plead guilty to count two of the trial “Case No. 2:20-CR-00322-ODW.”
The referenced court case, it is understood, charges Hushpuppi with “conspiracy to engage in money laundering.”
Added the Ramon Abbas/Hushpuppi plea agreement to @courtlistener / @RECAPtheLaw, for interested folks (and because there’s been a lot of bad information around this case from the beginning): https://t.co/uHJlir4rD4
— Evan Ratliff (@ev_rat) July 28, 2021
For a person to be deemed guilty of the crime, the document read, “there was an agreement between two or more persons to conduct a financial transaction involving property that represented the proceeds of wire fraud.”
It also further stated that the defendant must have known that the funds were “proceeds of some form of unlawful activity” and the transaction was designed “to conceal the nature, location, source, ownership, or control of the proceeds.”
Hushpuppi risks a statutory maximum of 20 years imprisonment on agreeing to violate the USC, Section 1956 (h).